Bucks papers from previous years?

[scary mum]

I am curious what happens to old papers from previous years in Bucks. Are the questions recycled and used many times over the years, or are they just never used again? And if not, does anyone know why not? It seems to me Bucks CC could make a fortune selling old papers - or they could use the previous year's papers instead of paper 1&2 for the practice tests so that they aren't the same every year. These are the sort of things I think about at night at the moment

[Sally-Anne]

Bucks CC does not own the copyright to the questions - they are the property of GL Assessment and therefore BCC cannot sell them or use them in any way beyond the specific testing process for which they have been commissioned.

There is no harm in the familiarisation papers being the same each year. Some parents or tutors may let children have prior sight of them, but that is generally pretty pointless. Appeal panels are well aware that the same papers are used very year and the scores from them would not make any significant difference at an appeal.

[scary mum]

No, I guess not, I certainly haven't shown my children them. It just seems to me there must be a lot of "unused" questiosn washing around out there that could be usefully used for some sort of practice.

[duffymoon]

There is no harm in the familiarisation papers being the same each year. Some parents or tutors may let children have prior sight of them, but that is generally pretty pointless......

I think its totally daft to let the kids see them beforehand. When our daughter was doing the dreaded tests last year I recall her saying some other children in her class had been set the familiarisation papers by their tutor. Surely the whole point is to see how they perform under proper test conditions with a paper they haven't seen before.

[Sally-Anne]

I think its totally daft to let the kids see them beforehand. When our daughter was doing the dreaded tests last year I recall her saying some other children in her class had been set the familiarisation papers by their tutor. Surely the whole point is to see how they perform under proper test conditions with a paper they haven't seen before.

Yes, I agree it is daft. The motivation tends to be two-fold. Firstly, the kids can brag like mad about having scored 80/80 in the practice papers and, secondly, the tutors live in the naive belief that at an appeal hearing the panel will be impressed by those 3 scores of 80/80, so little Johnny's substantially lower scores on the real papers must simply have been an "unfortunate blip" (probably involving the demise of a hamster).